Little Darlings

by Melanie Golding

  Lauren’s problem, according to the psychiatrist, was that she was very good at appearing outwardly to be mentally well, while maintaining a dysfunctional inner monologue. Her face had remained entirely placid as she’d thought, well, how the fuck would you know the first thing about my inner monologue? The thought that followed was one of hopelessness: If that’s what the doctors think, then there’s not an awful lot I can do about it, is there?

  As if she’d spoken aloud, the psychiatrist had said, “Obviously, the only way we can understand what’s happening with you is if you tell us. It’s an issue of trust. Trust takes a long time to build, I’m afraid.”

  Of course, he couldn’t say how long. She’d wanted to pound the window again when she returned to her room after that session, but she hadn’t. She sat rigidly on the bed, her hands clasped. Eventually an orderly entered the room and took hold of her shoulders, manoeuvred her body into bed and turned off the lights. She lay there in the semi-dark, waiting for the sleeping pills to work.

  “Ruthie sends her love,” said Patrick. “And Sonny and Daisy, too. They miss you.”

  “What about the boys?”

  “The boys are doing well,” he said. “Riley rolled over the other day.”

  “Did you bring them with you? Are they nearby?” She turned her face to the high window, as if she could sense them somewhere just outside, maybe hear their voices, call to them and have them answer.

  “Oh, honey,” he said, “no, I didn’t. I left them at home with the nanny.”

  Lauren slumped down on the bench, her chin falling to her chest. Her grey sweatshirt was soon dotted with dark teardrops.

  Patrick placed his arms around her as she cried. He smelled of unfamiliar shampoo, and sweet pastry.

  “Patrick, I can’t stay here any longer,” she said. “You have to get me out.”

  “I want you to come out. I do. We all want you home with us. But there’s a court order, you know that. We have to convince them that it’s OK now, that you won’t …”

  “What?”

  “Well. They’re just thinking of the boys. When you come home you’ll need help with them, and the nanny says she’ll be willing to stay on, at least at first. But at times you’ll be left alone.”

  “They’re my babies, Patrick.”

  “Yes.”

  “I wouldn’t harm them.”

  “No.” The denial sounded too emphatic to be authentic.

  “You don’t believe me.”

  At the next table they heard the old man cough three times, four.

  “He does that all night long, you know,” said Lauren. “I can hear him through the walls.” She turned around to look at the man. “Hey, Rod.” Rod swivelled his hooded eyes in their direction. “Can you give it a break, please? You don’t even have a cough.”

  The man didn’t blink. He snaked out a shocking pink tongue at Lauren, opened his mouth and coughed, spittle flecking their table and one foul bubble landing on Patrick’s hand, which he wiped with a measure of disgust on his nice clean trousers. They were glared at for a few more pointed seconds, and then the man turned away. After a moment, he coughed, louder than before.

  From the door, a nurse pushed a trolley towards them. “Medication.” The solidly built green-uniformed man gave a flat stare that wasn’t quite directed at either of them.

  Lauren was handed a small paper cup that held two yellow capsules, dangerous-looking things. She eyed the nurse, and the paper cup, with a barbed resentment, but she tipped the pills into her mouth, swallowed a slug of water and leaned forward for inspection. The nurse shone a light inside Lauren’s open mouth. “Tongue,” he said, and Lauren lifted it. Without a word, he clicked the torch off and moved the squeaking trolley in the direction of Rod.

  “They let me bring my phone in today,” said Patrick. “I took some films for you, of Riley and Morgan.”

  She clapped her hands together and sat up, illuminated with anticipation, as much as she could be; her movements were slow now, even when she was upbeat. He held out the phone for her to see, but he didn’t allow her to take it from him. “They said not to,” he explained, in response to her questioning frown.

  There was Riley, rolling over from his front, pushing against the floor with great effort until he tipped sideways. He lay on his side, legs curved stiffly backwards preventing him rolling all the way over, eyes and mouth wide with surprise that the world had flipped so suddenly. Soon though, his neck got tired and he lay his heavy head on the carpet, one arm stuck out to the front and the other waving desperately in the air. Behind the camera, Patrick was chuckling, calling his son’s name. Then Riley looked up again and his expression had changed, he was crying, he was stuck—why was no one helping him? The film ended.

  “Oh, bless him,” said Lauren. “Love him.”

  In the next one there were the two of them, smiling and flapping their arms, each in a different coloured bouncy chair.

  “New bouncers?” she said.

  “Yes. Look,” said Patrick, pointing. “Green for Riley, yellow for Morgan.”

  Lauren didn’t react. That was another side effect of the drugs: her usually nimble mind was slow on the smaller nuances. But then, incredulous, she said, “You don’t mean you still can’t …”

  “I’m joking,” said Patrick, laughing. “That was a joke. I know they’re in the wrong bouncers—the nanny did it. Of course I can tell them apart. They’re so different. It’s obvious.”

  She laughed, but it turned into a sob and he caught her before she sank down towards the floor.

  “I knew it,” she said quietly into his ear. “I keep doubting it. But it’s true, it worked. What I did was worth it; those boys are mine, Patrick. My babies.”

  “Of course they’re yours, sweet thing. Of course they are. Mine and yours. They always were.”

  He meant, not because of what you did, but in spite of it. She knew he’d never understand, but it didn’t matter if he did or didn’t. She knew the truth of what had happened underneath the water, when they were switched back: Bishop and Selver had slithered away, and her arms were immediately filled with her own boys, warm and familiar. When she’d looked fleetingly into the river woman’s eyes as the exchange was made and expected to see anger, what she saw was gratitude. In the end, the river woman had wanted the best for her babies, just like Lauren. And in the end the river woman knew she’d been wrong; that the best place for Bishop and Selver was under the water, with their loving mother.

  Lauren moved her head to look into Patrick’s eyes. “Do you think they’ll keep me here much longer?”

  He assured her that it wouldn’t be much longer. She smiled at him.

  One of the stationed orderlies stepped forward. He planted his feet and crossed his arms like a doorman. “Visiting’s over now,” he said loudly to everyone, and the three other visitors in the room started to make their way to the dining room doors.

  Lauren allowed Patrick to kiss her on the cheek, but held onto his arm as he tried to straighten up. “Did you bring that book I asked for?”

  He patted his pockets and pulled out a small, light brown volume. “This it?”

  She reached for it, ran her thumb over the faint shadow of the old-fashioned gold lettering.

  “Yes.”

  “Where’s it from?”

  “It was a gift,” said Lauren, inhaling the fragrance from the antique paper. Perhaps she would never know who it was that left the book in Cindy’s gift bag. In her heart, she wanted to believe it was somehow arranged by her mother, who knew that what was printed within those dusty pages provided the key to everything that followed. The frightening truth that she had to face, that she had faced, and lived through. And it had saved her babies, if not quite herself. Her mum would have known that that was the only thing that mattered to Lauren.

  “I had a flick through,” said Patrick. “Some of those stories are pretty gory. You’re absolutely sure this is what you want to be reading?”

  The ord
erly appeared, standing very close to them. “Excuse me, you need to leave now.” It wasn’t exactly threatening, but the tone he used wasn’t to be argued with. Patrick took hold of Lauren’s hand and squeezed. “I’ll see you next week.”

  He turned and held up a hand in farewell before stepping through the door. When he was out of sight, Lauren’s smile soured and her finger-wave curled into a fist. She knew he wouldn’t leave the building immediately; first he would slink into the consultation room and pour poison into her Observation Log. The therapeutic regime at the Selver required each visitor to add comments to the log after a visit, under headings that were supposed to function as guides or prompts, but which Lauren thought encouraged exaggeration and misinterpretation. At least, they did in Patrick. Headings included: Comments by the Patient Indicating Continued Unwanted or Inappropriate Thoughts; Behaviours Deemed to be Out of Character; Signs of Anxiety or Withholding of True Feelings. She’d seen what he’d put in there, describing her perfectly reasonable responses as emotional outbursts, or her unguarded comments as proof that she was deluded. When she’d first read the Observation Log, two things had occurred to Lauren: firstly, her husband was a traitor and couldn’t be trusted; secondly, for him to diligently record such flagrant half-truths, he must have had hidden reasons of his own for wanting to keep her locked up.

  One recent entry read:

  Lauren is still referring to her paranoid delusions as if they were real. She’s very emotional. I wouldn’t trust her alone with the babies. Perhaps look at extra medication?

  Aware of the psychiatrist’s scrutiny while she read, she’d kept her face neutral as her inner monologue let go a stream of swears.

  “What are you thinking?” the doctor had said.

  I’m thinking, my husband is a liar and a bastard.

  She said, with deliberate mildness, “I don’t like it. But I suppose I think he has a point.”

  The doctor smiled and noted something down. Baby steps, she thought.

  * * *

  When all the visitors had checked out of the ward, the patients were escorted back to their glass-walled rooms. Lauren sat on the bed, holding the Twin Tales book in her hands. After a while she let it fall open at the beginning of the story that she had turned to so many times, and began to read, her eyes skimming quickly along the words she knew so well. Although it had frightened her when Cindy had first read it to her, now the story was a comfort. She’d done what was required, and her boys were back in the world, where they belonged, even if they weren’t yet with her because she was stuck in here, for now. It was the ending she needed to see, to be reassured, to make sure it was exactly as she remembered.

  A Brewery of Eggshells (Traditional, Peak District, England)

  Once there was a man and his wife who lived together in a hut on the side of a mountain. They had baby twins, both of whom the wife nursed tenderly. One day, while the husband was far away with the flock, the wife was called to the house of a neighbour who was dying. She did not want to leave her two babes, as she had heard tell that faeries were roaming the land. Still, the neighbour was in dire need and so she went.

  On the way back she was dismayed to see a pair of old Elves of the Blue Petticoat crossing her path. She ran all the way home but when she got there saw that the twins were still in the cradle, and all was the same as when she had left.

  But all was not the same. From that day forward, the twins did not grow at all, and the man and his wife began to suspect that something was wrong.

  “These are not our children,” said the man.

  “Whose children can they be?” asked the wife.

  And so arose the great strife. The man and his wife were both very sad for a long time, until the wife decided to seek the help of the wise man, who lived in a cave in the place they called the God’s Graveyard a few miles hence.

  It was the time of year for reaping, and not long until the oats and rye would be harvested. The wise man, hearing of the woman’s woe, told her this: “You must clean out an old hen’s egg and boil up some potage in it, then go to the door as if to give it to the reapers for supper. Then, listen for what the babies say.”

  “But they are too young yet to speak,” said the woman.

  “If the elves have changed them, they are as old as the hills, and more,” said the wise man.

  “And what of my own two babes?” she asked.

  “If the babies speak, you will know that they are changed. But also that your own are close by, with the elf-mother.”

  “And if they speak, and they are changed, what am I to do?”

  “You must take hold of them both and throw them into the river.”

  So, on harvest day, the woman cleaned out an eggshell and did as the wise man had said. She cooked up the potage on the fire, saying, “Here is a feast for the reapers, more than enough for ten,” and she took it to the door where she stood and listened. Immediately, the twins began to speak. One said to the other:

  Stream before a river I knew

  A rock before a hill

  But how can she cook up an eggshell brew

  With ten empty stomachs to fill?

  Upon hearing this, the woman knew at once that the babes were not her own. She took hold of them and threw them into the river, just as the wise man had told her. Immediately the elves in their blue trousers appeared and jumped into the water to rescue their offspring, and once they had done so off they scuttled, back to their homes, spitting, and cursing the woman for what she had done.

  When the woman returned to the cottage, her own true babes lay in the cradle, and all was well.

  Lauren read the final line again and again, tears streaming. She rocked back and forth on the bed, cradling the book, repeating it in a whisper, over and over. “All was well, all was well, all was well.”

  EPIGRAPH CITATIONS

  Chapter 1

  James Russell Lowell, The Poetical Works (Cambridge: Riverside, 1904), vol. 1 (The Complete Writings of James Russell Lowell, vol. 9)

  Chapter 3

  Yeats, William Butler, The Wanderings of Oisin, and other poems, (Paul, Trench & Co, 1889)

  Chapter 7

  John Greenleaf Whittier, The Complete Poetical Works, Cambridge edition (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1894)

  Chapter 10

  W. B Yeats, Fairy and Folk Tales of Ireland, (A.L. Burt, 1900)

  Chapter 12

  Jacob Grimm, Stallybrass (tr.) Deutsche Mythologie, 4th ed. (George Bell & Sons, 1877), v. 3

  Chapter 15

  Oral retelling of Irish folklore

  Chapter 16

  Keeping Watch Over Children, Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm, Das Schauen auf die Kinder, Deutsche Sagen, (1816) no. 89

  Chapter 17

  A. Kuhn and W. Schwartz, Norddeutsche Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche (Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1848)

  Chapter 30

  Oral retelling of Jamaican folklore

  Chapter 36

  Hartland, Edwin Sidney: The Science of Fairy Tales: An Enquiry Into Fairy Mythology (New York: Scribner & Welford, 1891)

  Chapter 43

  Hollingworth, Rev A. G, The History of Stowmarket the Ancient County Town of Suffolk, (1844)

  AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

  Melanie Golding grew up in a village in Leicestershire. She has been employed in many occupations including farm hand, factory worker, childminder and music teacher. Throughout all this, because and in spite of it, there was always the writing. In recent years she has won and been shortlisted in several local and national short story competitions. In 2016, she graduated from the MA in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University, with distinction. Little Darlings is her first novel.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the names, characters, organizations, places and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real or actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 b
y Melanie Golding

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Crooked Lane Books, an imprint of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.

  Crooked Lane Books and its logo are trademarks of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.

  Library of Congress Catalog-in-Publication data available upon request.

  ISBN (hardcover): 978-1-68331-997-9

  ISBN (ePub): 978-1-68331-998-6

  ISBN (ePDF): 978-1-68331-999-3

  Cover design by Melanie Sun

  Printed in the United States.

  www.crookedlanebooks.com

  Crooked Lane Books

  34 West 27th St., 10th Floor

  New York, NY 10001

  First Edition: April 2019

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